Hymnals
by griffin holloway
Summary: Character study. The Everdeen family spent time chasing ghosts. They all tried so hard to cope. But regardless, they cracked. They broke.


A/N: This is from the POV of Mrs. Everdeen, mother of Katniss and Prim. Katniss' detachment to her mother makes her the person she is. You see, Katniss never even mentions her by name. Nobody knows her full story. That changes now.

* * *

Her parents named her Delilah.

She had really, really hated that name. She had hated it more than strawberry jam and the ugly shade of purple that was in a fading bruise and the boy behind her in class who would pull on her hair when nobody else was looking. That's a lot of hate for a little girl.

Her family had lived in the merchant district in town, away from the green forest and the pretty meadow where the flowers bloomed in spring.

She used to be scared of the forest, until she learned that scary things still existed outside of it. That the monsters didn't live under her bed, they didn't hide in the closets, they didn't come out only when darkness descended on them to cover the light of day.

They existed in people, they existed _in us_. They existed in her.

* * *

Lily.

It was the name she wanted to be called, Lily.

She liked the sound it made coming from her lips. The taste it left on her tongue. Much better than strawberry jam.

It was softer, less jagged. A sweet flower. A new beginning.

She went by Lily.

* * *

Long blonde locks cascaded down her back in waves. Her bright eyes were as blue as the ocean could ever hope to be.

People said she was beautiful. They noticed her when she walked by them, and she would blush and duck her head in sheltered shame. Because she never liked the attention, it made her feel weak.

She didn't want to be _weak_.

* * *

One of her best friends growing up was a girl called Maysilee.

She had a twin sister and a smile so wide it could reach out and touch you. But she stopped smiling at sixteen.

Maysie's name was called at the reaping. Haymitch Abernathy's name was called next. He might have even loved her.

But he came home, became a drunkard.

She didn't.

* * *

Lily would never have to face an arena.

But she was no longer a child. She had to grow up now. It meant she had to decide to love, to marry, if she should ever have children and force them to go through what she had to go through.

These choices would make her. These choices would break her.

* * *

She let him come to her like rain.

The seam boy, the coal miner. The one who made the birds stop with just the sound of his voice. She never felt more alive than when she was around him. She had loved him more than anything.

He made her heart sing.

She gave up everything for that feeling, for a piece of that pure joy. She gave it all up to become Mrs. Everdeen.

* * *

Several years later their baby girl was born in early May.

Katniss.

Dark hair, grey eyes, looking everything like her father.

She loved that little girl. She had held the baby in her arms and wished with everything she had that she could protect her.

But she knew she could wish upon all the stars in the sky and blow away all the dandelion seeds in the field but it wouldn't change a single thing.

She couldn't change anything.

* * *

Four years after Katniss came her sweet Primrose.

Soft blue eyes, light features just like hers.

So innocent. So precious. Lily wept, wondering.

They didn't deserve such beautiful girls. And her girls didn't deserve to live in such a cruel world.

* * *

Seven years later and the mine blew up.

Time stood still. The earth stopped spinning. Lily's sun would never rise again.

She fell to her knees, gasping for breath that wouldn't come. The air was knocked right out of her lungs. Alone now. Her husband, gone.

The sorrow infected her like cancer. It could kill her, it could kill them all.

* * *

She was empty.

Hiding. Looking out the window, begging the sky for rain that would not come.

It was scare. Dry.

 _She wasn't there._

Katniss shook her head.

Hunger laughed at them. It laughed and it laughed and it laughed and it laughed.

And Prim _cried and cried and cried and cried._

* * *

Her eleven year old daughter hunted for food like a enraged wolf. And she snarled and glared like one too.

It was survival of the fittest. She had lost, her kid became the protector.

Katniss won't forgive her mother. She can't ever forget.

Lily wouldn't dare to ask her to.

* * *

Nobody was ready for Effie Trinket calling her daughter's name at the reaping for the 74th Hunger Games.

Her heart dropped inside her chest, caving in on her worn body, like an avalanche of emotions coming all at once.

Her youngest tucked in her shirt and started forward. Her oldest rose up bravely and took the destined fall.

Things would never be the same.

* * *

Prim's screams echoed in her mother's ear.

Her own were silent.

 **no no no no no no no no no no no no no**

* * *

Lily watched Katniss on the screen. She almost couldn't bare to watch but she owed it to her.

If her daughter's last breaths were to be shown on that screen, she would watch it. She would watch her sacrifice.

This just wasn't what love was supposed to look like.

* * *

Katniss pulled out the berries. She placed some in Peeta's hand. Her hand was steady, eyes determined. Preparing to die.

Lily's own hand was glued to mouth.

She uttered a small, strangled sound. She had been aiming for more a gasp than anything but even to her it sounded more like a full on sob.

Prim shifted next to her, visibly just as shaken. She wrapped her arms around her mother's waist. Waiting.

Their palms moved closer and closer and closer towards their mouths.

Then then they just

 **stopped.**

* * *

Victor's village was not home.

But Katniss was there and Prim was there and even though they were not completely whole and even though they weren't completely happy, they were safe there together.

If she only had realized then her stupidity. Even the birds outside the window were fighting over crumbs.

Nobody was ever _safe._

* * *

She cried herself to sleep in her bedroom at night. Silently, so the others wouldn't hear. It took practice to perfect.

* * *

Prim looked at her mother. Lily looked at her daughter.

They both knew that no matter what happened, they were with Katniss. One hundred percent.

That what a family does, right?

* * *

Lily thought Effie's extravagant butterfly dress was an awful contrast with the silent tears running down her daughter's face.

It was a hideous, horrible sight.

* * *

Another year, another screen to watch.

Lightning struck as Katniss shot the arrow into the sky. Static arrived along with confusion, then Gale. Then the bombs started, the chaos, and the screams erupted like lava flowing from a volcano. Everything was hot, sticky, messy and sudden.

They **ran.**

* * *

She heard them. They whispered in bed to one another in their compartment at night. Secrets, hopes, encouragements, confessions, beliefs - she didn't know. But it made her heart throb with each beat.

She had never had siblings. She would never know what it was like. She used to be grateful for it, but at that moment she was almost jealous.

Her daughters loved each other far more than they could ever love her.

* * *

Primrose healed and Katniss fought, like they had been meant for it all their lives. Maybe they had, maybe that was why they all had to suffer so. To become a symbol, to find peace, to create unity, to give comfort, to make everything they had gone through to not be in vain. To finish everything they had started.

It was their purpose and they lived for it.

They paid for it.

* * *

She went completely numb for about an hour. That's the amount of time she went thinking that both of her daughters were gone, that everyone she had ever loved was now completely wiped out from existence. Until she learned that the one that was declared dead yesterday was suddenly alive somehow. And the one who was alive and well yesterday was suddenly dead.

And all of the sudden she selfishly wondered if she could have volunteered for Maysilee all those years ago. To have saved her family from this fate.

It wouldn't have hurt as much.

* * *

She picks up the phone to call her, from a district miles and miles away. It rings and rings and rings and rings.

She tries days, weeks or is it months later, and the phone rings and rings and rings and until a different voice answers.

 _It's Peeta._

She feels less guilty. Katniss isn't alone.


End file.
